Blood Angels Librarian – It’s Beaky!

I’ve finished (in record time) my Blood Angels Librarian, and yes, that is the classic, Rogue Trader/2nd Ed era ‘Beaky’ librarian that some will remember from the Eavy Metal team’s inserts in the 2nd Ed rule books. I wrote about him a while ago and had to go onto Ebay and find him. Excuse the dodgy iPhone pictures, but that’s all I had to hand and I was too excited not to share. Here’s what the original looked like:

And here’s another shot of mine (if you can’t tell, I am rather proud of this one even if it’s not my best work):

So, a couple of things to note. Firstly this has yet again reminded me how much I hate painting metal miniatures. All you people who get bleary eyed and remember the good ol’ days when lead poisoning was a painter’s concern – I don’t get it. You have to invent half the detail yourself, it doesn’t hold the undercoat or the paint as well as plastic and it’s just a bit ‘meh’. That being said, this guy wasn’t that hard to paint and everything turned out alright. And given his legendary status (in my mind at least) I was more than happy to slum it for a day or two.

You may notice that the banner and pole are a little different to the original one. That’s because the one I bought didn’t come with a banner and so I had to remake it. And again harking back to those ‘good ol’ days’ I’m just glad I didn’t have to work on a paper banner. Some people are excellent at working on paper, and more power to them, but I am not one of those painters. It was a lot of fun riffing on the original design and bringing it forward a little. I also added a ‘IX’ just to ensure it fits in with the legion that I’m working on.

Another thing I noticed, and the reason I based him on a bloody great rock (making it now one of the heaviest miniatures I own), is that he’s considerably smaller than modern day marines. You can see above, he’s somewhat squat (no, not that type of squat) compared to the modern day miniatures. Hopefully it won’t be too noticeable and the banner does give him a little more height.

I also changed up the sword a little from the original image. Bare metal was du jour back then, but I wanted to give him a force weapon so a bit of blue-tinted lightning has been added. I think that turned out alright – not a trick I often use to be honest so I’m just happy it doesn’t look awful.

I really like the red legs actually. I think I did a pretty good job with those. I’m not nearly as used to painting blue armour though so I’m happy that turned out alright. The model actually has a lot more details than I thought it would have, with rivets, pipes and scrolls dotted around. One thing that was weird painting again after all these years was the bug eyes – they really do pop out rather than being sunken spaces. That was tricky because a lot of the rules for painting eyes go out the window when they seem inside out!

And that’s about that. It was awesome to finally get round to painting this dude, given that I’ve been meaning to painting him for over 20 years now. A nice bit of nostalgia with just enough modernisation to make him look ok. If only I’d been old enough way back when, maybe I could have worked on that legendary Eavy Metal team of the late 80s/early 90s. Alas, I was born too late. But it was great to work on, despite it being lead, and he’s now a proud new HQ option for my Blood Angels legion (pre-Nikea of course). Just need to keep going with those troops now. Onwards!

5 comments on “Blood Angels Librarian – It’s Beaky!”

😀 love it, pretty much a perfect update on the classic, i personally explain away the height differences as a peril of the warp, but a good chunk of stone is as valid ;).

Fully agree with the rose tinted lead glasses, about 2/3rd of the way through finally getting round to painting my scout squad its been sitting in skull white primer for 19 years now and man, leads a pain in the arse compared to plastic, at least the mini’s are characterful enough to make it worth while, and the scouts look so much better than there modern counterparts, having different faces really makes a difference!, although it also makes me wonder if i will ever bother to repaint my “classic” BA army, was about 3-4000 pts back in codex angels of death days, and i foolishly stripped them all about 15 years ago, painting 30 death company will be fun(!) and i may well retire the 2nd ed box set tactical squad…